Microsoft’s Robbie Bach has “revealed” in interview with CBC that “70% or 80% of the publishers in the world are already doing Natal-based games”, a statement to be taken with so much salt that to speak the quote aloud incites a bitter dry heave. Ignoring the quite improbable claim that Natal has captured the excitement of what would sensibly amount to tens of thousands of developers pan-globally, the PR spiel packs with it no significant details outside of already assumed first part support.
With just nine to twelve months before the projected unveiling of the hardware addition, it is inevitable that a breadth of developers have already begun work on titles that make use of Natal’s motion sensing capabilities. However, the woolly figures that Bach presents seem little more than generalised spin in order to better set up consumer expectation and clamour for the device.
In true marketing speak, Microsoft’s President of Entertainment & Devices Division claimed that “the breadth and power of the ecosystem from our partners”, i.e. the billowing support of development teams worldwide, “would bring lots of new ideas, new innovations, new concepts to the marketplace”. With the sheer collective weight of Robbie’s development forces presumably dropping titles into the coming holiday season like a broken gumball machine spewing sweets, it seems that consumer desire for innovative full body waving simulations will be met with retail flourish and aplomb come Christmas ‘10
Via: VG247
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